This is an unexpected but really quite welcome development. Professor Althouse has been critical of Cain previously and (like most in academia) is not generally a fan of the populist style.

And then adds:

We can agree that a flat tax will generally be of most benefit to the wealthy (who pay a much higher percentage of their income under the existing progressive system) without assuming, willy-nilly, that others will be impoverished as a result. And the point of “9-9-9″ is not to achieve “social justice,” but rather to unleash capital investment to spur economic growth. It is a supply-side solution to our current economic woes, and as such has been praised by the Club for Growth and by Art Laffer.

Would a man rather be unemployed and paying no taxes, or would he rather have a job and pay taxes? That’s the real choice, and yet David Gregory can’t seem to understand it.

We could update an old joke Ronald Reagan used to tell: “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job. And a recovery is when David Gregory loses his job.”

MR. CAIN: We replace capital gains tax. We replace the payroll tax. We replace corporate income tax, replace personal income tax, and replace the death tax. It is a replacement tax structure.

MR. GREGORY: But where do state taxes go? You’re saying they’re going to be repealed?

MR. CAIN: If you–with the current structure, you have state taxes, right? So with this new structure, you’re still going to have taxes–state taxes. That is muddying the water.

MR. GREGORY: How so?

MR. CAIN: Because today, under the current tax code, state taxes are there if they have it. If they don’t have a state taxes, they don’t have it. It has nothing to do with this replacement structure for the federal tax code.

MR. GREGORY: But that doesn’t make any sense to me. If I’m already paying state taxes, and I have a new Cain administration national sales tax, I’ve got more state taxes.

No, you don’t have more state taxes, you have the same state taxes — unless, that is, you don’t know the difference between a sales tax and a state tax, which would seem to be the case for Gregory. If Sarah Palin made such an error, it would be seen as proof that she was unfit for the national stage. For Gregory, well . . . draw your own conclusions.

Reading the transcript, what strikes me is how slow-witted Gregory was. Repeatedly, Cain makes a simple, clear point, but Gregory doesn’t seem to get it. This became almost painful during an exchange about state sales taxes.

There are too many in the media that merely pick daily winners and losers, rather than performing serious analysis of candidates’ platforms and leadership history. Newsflash: It’s called “vetting”. And that’s what primary voters want to do during the months that precede an election.

The media should have learned this lesson after their lack of such during the Obama campaign.

Is it any wonder traditional media, including NBC, continue to see their influence diminish? Viewership statistics of the primary debates reflect enormous interest of the electorate. Voters are looking for solutions. Is Herman Cain’s tax plan one of them? With such drivel from the ilk of David Gregory, they’ll have to figure it out without the press.

“I realize “let’s take these sons of bitches out” can be interpreted to mean let’s vote these terrible people out of office. But “take them out” is not an idiomatic expression that corresponds to “vote them out.” Take them out? Maybe that’s not the phrase he intended to use, but if it was unintended, it was still a gaffe. A revealing gaffe. Unless you’re speaking in a positive way — referring to taking someone out on a date, for example — “take them out” is a violent command. With “sons of bitches” right there, it’s unmistakably violent. Now, you can say it’s only metaphorical, and all Hoffa really wants is to oust these people from office.

But it was only last January that Obama and many other Democrats were saying that violent metaphors, including a simple target on a map, were dangerous incitements for the unstable irrational folk out there.”

“Did Obama disapprove of Hoffa’s incendiary message? Apparently not; he mentioned Hoffa only to say that he is proud of him. But, what the heck: he sat through “God DAMN America” for twenty years without protest, so I guess he can put up with Tea Party “sons of bitches,” too.”